Illinois Medicine

GIVING BACK S Two COM students are among eight at UIC named Schweitzer Fellows ONYA KENKARE and Sangeeta Patel of the College of Medicine have been named 2009–2010 Schweitzer Fellows, joining six other students at the University of Illinois at Chicago who have been honored with the award. The U.S. Schweitzer Fellows Programs provide community service fellowships for graduate students in health-related professional fields who are dedicated to addressing the unmet health needs in their local areas. The fellows will devote more than 200 hours of service to their projects over the course of a year. Kenkare will begin a series of classes for teen mothers at the Maryville Academy Madden Teen Parenting Center in Des Plaines. Ken- kare's presentations will cover nutri- tion, cooking, basic health principles, stress management and techniques on complementary and alternative medicine. Patel, in collaboration with Chicago's Snow City Arts, will teach hospitalized children to play instru- ments, write music and digitally record their own songs. The project will primarily serve public aid patients and is designed to promote the healing process as well as facilitate learning outside the classroom. AGING TEAMMATES M 8 | SPRING 2 010 UIC researcher heads $10 million grant to tackle Alzheimer's disease ARY JO LADU, PhD, associate profes- sor of anatomy and cell biology in the College of Medicine, has been awarded more than $9.8 million to head a five-year National Institute on Aging Program Project Grant. The proj- ect will bring together a "dream team" of researchers from five institutions to examine the biology of the most important risk factor in Alzheimer's disease, the cholesterol-carrying protein apolipoprotein E (apoE), and its receptors in the central nervous system. LaDu was one of the first researchers to inves- tigate the role of apoE in neuronal injury and death. She showed that these lipoproteins in the central nervous system are distinct in structure and function from those found elsewhere in the body. LaDu decided to use her long-term associa- Mary Jo LaDu, PhD, has brought together a "dream team" of researchers. tion with other researchers in the field to develop a project that could tackle the biology of apoE and apoE receptors from all angles. "I was able to bring together researchers who had overlapping interests and diverse expertise to attack the problem," she says. The other investigators are Steve Estus at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, who studies the molecular genetics of AD; cell biologist Guojun Bu of Washington University School of Medi- cine in St. Louis, an expert on apoE receptors; neurobiologist William Rebeck of Georgetown University, who studies the cellular mechanisms of signal transduction relevant to AD; and Edwin Weeber of the University of South Florida, a behaviorist and electrophysiologist who focuses on learning and memory and studies changes in synaptic function and animal behavior in genetically altered mice. "This is the first time that an NIH Program Project Grant has brought together investigators from so many institutions," LaDu says. PHOTO: LLOYD DEGRANE

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